You may have read last week that the NFLPA has agreed to pay a group of nearly 2100 retired players over 26 million dollars.  The agreement comes 6 months after a jury awarded the players 28 million dollars but this will put an end to the suit.  The retired players allege that they haven’t been financially rewarded for their likenesses on video games and trading cards and they were right according to the jury.

What does this mean for those players?  If my math is right that is nearly 13 thousand for each of the players.  Not a great deal of money but a decent amount.  As part of the settlement the players agreed to not bring this up again so this is final.  It doesn’t make me happy one bit.  The NFL was started and made popular by these players.  They had terrible protective equipment and health coverage.  Many of the players were injured beyond repair and especially for their time.  Since then we have video games where we proudly be the early teams and the early players and bring them back to life so to speak.  The NFL makes a lot of money for this endeavor and could share the wealth greater than they do. 

What about the old players and the retirements they get or is that a whole new ball of wax?  Some old players like Earl Campbell can’t walk today but they gave all they could to the NFL and to their cities and they deserve better compensation and retirements.  The league allows rookies to make crazy amounts of money while never having played while greats like Earl Campbell are stuck in wheelchairs or far worse.  Seems backward to me. 

I’m glad the older retired players got something but if you ask me they should be getting a whole lot more.

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